promise i will post photos and more thoughts over these next few days.

things i'm still thinking about: israel's collective memory, eid al- adha, the "security fence" around bethlehem and the entire west bank, housing demolitions, friends across the world and humanizing the other.

love, love.

in the past 4 weeks...

i have eaten chicken curry, prawn curry, mutton curry, veg curry in india, mangoes, fuul, tamiyya, roz bi-leben, shwarma in egypt, falafels and nutella pancakes and thai food and pizza with wine and kosher bagels in israel.

i have been to the wailing wall, and seen the apartheid wall.

i have hugged kids and cried and laughed and sang, swam in the mediterranean and the bay of bengal. i have listened to conversations in arabic, telugu, hebrew, yiddish.

i have walked the old city, coptic cairo, hyderabad. i listened to hymns at the church of the holy sepulcher, sang songs at church in an orphanage, visited a museum of art from the coptic church. i have been to a church of expats in a suburb of cairo.

i have listened to the soundtrack to king countless times. i have listened to arabic pop, patty griffin, derek webb. this american life. j's lunch song. i've shared an i.pod and a zune for countless hours of travel. i've listened to car horns and calls to prayer and songs in telugu that warm my heart.

i have slept on trains, on planes, on couches, on mattresses on the floor, on buses and in taxis and graciously loaned beds. i have even slept on half a bed on a sleeper train.

all of this, this entire adventure, i shared with the one i'll share the rest of my life with. i'm so incredibly thankful for these past 4 weeks, and to say that i'm looking forward to the future is a gross understatement. God is so good.

goodbye, my heart.

khan al-khalili: scarab beetles, shisa and mosque toppers.

felucca ride on the nile.

is this my life? is it real? i still can't shake this feeling that soon i'll wake up and this whole thing will dissipate, that, like a dream, i'll only have fleeting memories of all of this by the end of the day.

it's truly amazing how much a year can do, how drastically some 365 days can change the course of one's life. i am so, so thankful for this gift- this past month, this promise of a future. i can scarcely believe that this is forever.

or, that this trip is over.

salaam for now.

i love my life.

garbage city. wow.

it makes me deeply convicted to consume less. it deeply re-enforces my beliefs on living simply, on globally conscious consumption, on stopping to THINK where my money, my waste, my excess goes... and who it hurts.

date night. dinner on the nile and sufi dancing at the khan. holy wow.

7 years ago i became weirdly intrigued by whirling dervishes. tonight, j took me to see them. i just sat next to him and grinned the whole time.

at one point i leaned over and said, 'did you know i've wanted to see this for 7 years?'

he smiled at me and said, 'when you talk, i listen.'

on safety and home

back in cairo.
salat and smog.
and this feeling of familiarity, of home.

did i feel safe in israel?

i suppose in all of the conventional ways, yes. i mean, stories of bombings in sbarro and other trendy young hang outs didn't really scare me. it's the kids with guns, the settlers, the explosions in the distance and the uncertainty as to whether they're fireworks or semi-automatic weapons that frighten me.

i never really feared for my own safety, but for the palestinian kids trying to walk to school every day, for the jewish kids who would grow up and join the idf and be socialized to fear, to hate, to defend at any cost that i feared for.

again, i understand why jesus stood here and grieved for this city.

home is relative.

i had every intention of uploading the photos both mata ji and grace took of j and i, but this internet connection isn't much faster than what we were working with in india. :) i promise, i WILL post them here when i get back.

j and i just got back from a few days in israel. i must say, i think i fell in love with jerusalem. it was everything i thought it might be and so much more than i could have imagined or really, could have fathomed. photos and reflections on our trip (and egypt and india) when i return.

for now, though, it's nice to be back in cairo. it's funny, i found myself while in israel saying things like, 'when we get back home.' cairo, in all its craziness and pollution and scary street crossings, does feel familiar. don't get me wrong- i know i'm in some great, very capable hands here and i don't pretend to have any idea how to actually do life here, but the (relative, of course) familiarity is nice.

egypt, schmeegypt.

tonight, israel schmisrael. :)

sorry i've been a lame blogger. i've actually gone back to an ol' paper and pen journal, and i'll post on our adventures when i get back.

t-minus 11 days

real, post-of-content here. i am so ready to turn in envelope stuffing for navigating my way, jet-lagged and exhausted, through various airports in different parts of the world en route to hyderabad! although, with what the last few weeks leading up to this trip have had in store, i have to admit i'm curious to see what else might happen. :) (we added two travelers and one extended his stay to travel to bapatla with us!)

this weekend i have opted to stay home from a wedding in steamboat springs with my dear mellie furtado because i just have an overwhelming amount of Stuff to Get Done. thus, project "determine which crap i have, which was lost and what i can possibly borrow" will commence...

and, project "run every errand you can think of now because you'll come up with more later." speaking of, thank you lauren, i FINALLY got around to bringing in my camera to have it cleaned. it desperately needed it.

so, as the title suggests: we have 11 days before departing for hyderabad from denver, via london... i cannot wait to see those kids. after everyone else flies home from india, i'll go with j to cairo for a few days, and then israel for a few more. i can't say it enough: i LOVE the adventure my life has become! :)

sinai: desert and mountain and sea

as usual, please forgive my run-on sentances and bad grammar. while traveling, editing my writing is low on my list of priorities. :)

the sunrise from mount sinai was, in short, incredible. we spent about 5 hours trekking up a camel path in the dark, with headlamps and book lights and cell phones to keep us from tripping over our own feet and the rocks in the path. as we were hiking, every once in a while i'd turn off my headlamp and look up, look around at the incredible star-strewn sky nestled between HUGE sloping, rocky mountains and breathe a word of thanks.

we climbed and we climbed and we continually refused weathered looking bedouin men leading camels upward and we climbed and we climbed. tiny little mud huts dotted the hillside, offering a seat and small source of heat and light and lots of overpriced tea and western candybars. as we sat under the black, black sky and rested and waited for everyone to catch up, people from all over the world filtered in and out, speaking italian and korean and french and german, all pressing on toward the summit.

the path was incredibly rocky, and as we neared the top we began to climb a set if stairs which, had i seen them in the daylight, i would have been very wary of. (alissa, one of jon's MESP alum friends, says the monks who hung out in the nearby monestary had to build them as penance. what sins could warrent such punishment??) it was really quite cold. some of our egyptian friends who came along had never seen snow before, and there were a few patches on the western side of the mountain which they used for snowball fights and snowmen. :)

we made it to the top just as the sky began to lighten and found our seats on the eastern face. from the mountain, the desolate landscape stretched out as far as we could see- and all i could see was desert. literally, piles of rocks and sand and patches of snow. (why in the world would anyone want to take over the sinai? and how in the world could anyone wander in this desert for 40 years?) as the sun rose slowly in the sky it fell on the jagged profiles of the mountains and filled the valleys with orange light, and pilgrims at the top blew shofars and sang hymns and welcomed the morning. and what a morning it was!

after climbing the mountain, we drove through more desert and past more mountains to dahab, a little touristy town on the shores of the red sea. dahab is about 10 miles (?) from saudi arabia, and when the sun sets it reflects red off the cliffs. we ate breakfast/ lunch/ dinner in these little restaurants along the "boardwalk" with egyptian tents for walls and sat on big cushions on the floor, fending off cats and listening to the gentle waves lap against the shore. at night, the restaurants light firebowls and lamps and candles and the whole atmosphere is really cozy and lends itself well to more "i love egypt" moments.

we spent all day friday lounging around on the shores of the red sea, making small conversation with bedouin children and women in nikab (again, forgive my spelling) trying to sell bracelets and necklaces to scantily clad white tourists. (i'm not sure why speedos transcend culture, but i wish they didn't.)

saturday morning was our morning for snorkling- the weather was beautiful and the water cold. i stayed in just long enough to find nemo, but completely enjoyed my morning lazing around on the dock, talking with students and watching two little bedouin sisters take turns launching themselves off the dock into the water. the culture in dahab is funny- it's very tourist oriented, but very egyptian at the same time. white people snorkling and scuba diving in the blue hole in tiny two pieces next to muslim girls in long sleeve shirts and hijabs next to men in galabeyas and kaffeiyas (and, to my amusement, sometimes great big ol' aviator sunglasses) riding camels and horses down dusty roads between the sea and the mountains, jeeps packed full of people zig-zagging along the beach... lots of time for me to sit in my cognitive dissonance and think.

in sum, life is good. :) today we head to the pyramids and to find something for huckleberry and the woman at the post office, and j and i do our best to enjoy each other's company as much as we can to store up for the months ahead. while this week has certainly been a gift (and what a gift it is!) i'm sad to see it over.

probably won't have time to update again until i'm back in the states. stay tuned for photos (and edited grammar!) as always, thanks for reading.

a quiet morning at the villa (with an adventure on the horizon)

i posted a note on the first by dear jon higgins- be sure to read it!

i like doing life here. :)

right now, outside the window, the eesh men selling bread, the men with their donkey carts and their roasted sweet potatoes, the horse carts with green beans are wandering through the streets, all yelling out what it is that they're selling. the muezzin (or, as the case may be, the recording of a muezzin) call out the shahada at different intervals, each a few seconds or minutes off from one another, calling the faithful to join with the faithful across the world in bowing toward mecca, offering their prayers toward heaven...

there's an ahwa on every block, sometimes more than one. elderly egyptian men sit and sip tea from glasses, puff on their shishas and watch traffic and people walk by on the streets, kids play soccer in sandals and women hang their washing outside the windows of their flats to dry in the sun and the dusty air. men in galabeyas and kaffeiyas wander fairly aimlessly through the streets, families walk from the bread distribution center across from j's flat with arms full of eesh and ninjas sneak along the streets in the shadows...

life is more quiet here than in india. fewer horns, less traffic (yeah, that's right- i said it. there's less traffic here than in india- it's crazy though, because crossing the street here is MUCH scarier than india).

we had shwarma at niema's last night, with a can of fayrouz. everyone, be jealous. :) we've covered all the food bases so far save for falafel, or ta'miyya here in egypt- and i'm excited to attempt some of these things in our kitchen when i get back! (friends, get ready.)

this evening at 6pm we all hop on a bus and drive into the sinai. we'll arrive sometime in the wee hours of the morning, climb the mountain and wait for the sun. then, we'll go snorkling in the red sea and hang out on a beach. i love my life. :) thanks for reading!

ahlan min masr!

i'm here, in egypt, at long last. :) the past few days of my life have been as follows:

a wrap up to my india trip:
saturday morning: visit to pipe village/ NCL banda. jenni chelli came along, which was nice. i love my job, and i love being able to share my job with people i care about. it's also deeply, profoundly meaningful to be able to visit the same families in the same slums year after year, trip after trip. i wish i could put it to words, the feeling i get when i walk into a village and see familiar faces and can put names to them. (i'm sorry i can't post photos, but i will when i get home.) one little girl named mamta was so excited that i remembered her name that she walked around the village (pipe village) holding my hand and chatting away in a mix of telugu/ english for our whole visit. i am in love.

saturday afternoon/ evening: throw up. all the way to the base. in traffic from the sonia gandhi rally. the graduation ceremony was WONDERFUL. doug (el presidente) had asked us all to sit together as a staff, but as it turned out there were no seats to do that. which, much to my heart's content, meant i got to sit in the back with all the kids. :) i sat with rebecca, mamta, sangeeta and sangeeta's little sister deepa, all kids from the pipe village. we talked in telugu, a little in hindi, and in english, and true to indian style only paid attention when there was a song or dance on stage (shh, don't tell the bossman i just said that. it was all the kids, i swear! :)) when it came time for the students who were graduating to walk across the stage in their blue caps and gowns, i just sat with little 5 year old deepa on my lap with tears in my eyes, deep love and gratitude for sharing in this moment in my heart as i hugged this precious little one and told her i'd try to come back for her graduation from high school in 10 years. what an amazing experience to be a part of! ah!

and to watch kancha illaiah wipe tears from his eyes as he addresses the crowd, and bangaraju as he tells us he used to teach these kids, now graduating from high school the alphabet under a tree? priceless. i wouldn't trade those moments for the world.

saturday night: airport. all night. fly 3 hours to dubai.

on traveling:
sunday morning: spend 8-9 hours sleeping in the airport. find a starbucks and get a caramel macciato. pay "37" for that and a blueberry muffin- whatever "37" means. (edit a week later: it means 10$ USD. wish i had known that beforehand!)

sunday afternoon: 4 hour flight from dubai to cairo. arrive in cairo overwhelmed and unsure of the day or time. figure out how to get past "passport control" and find my luggage and my habibi. (p.s. it's cold here.)

on being here in egypt:
monday: spend a quiet day here, adjusting again to a time difference, a different culture and language and way of doing life. ate some tasty food, had my first glass of sahlab (sweet nectar from heaven!), lots of tea, and hummus (i got the hummus!) and eesh. (aaaiiiieeeesssshhhh!)

tuesday: play tourist! we visited 4 (count them: four) mosques yesterday. they are, and please forgive my poor spelling: mohammad ali mosque and the citadel, al rafa'i, sultan hassan and ibn tulun. i had an 'i love egypt' moment yesterday while climbing the minaret of ibun tulun right as mid-morning call to prayer echoed throughout the entire city. it was one of those existential moments where i step back, look at my life and my heart is filled with joy and disbelief that this really is mine, this gift is mine to enjoy and that i really am, wonder of wonders, here in cairo, climbing the minaret of a mosque from the 7th century. i have approximately 95 photos of the skyline from up in there, and some of them include THE PYRAMIDS! AH!!! it was nice to play tourist on a quiet tuesday morning, as it meant we only shared ibn tulun with an art class and maybe three or four other white people. (for the record, jRo, i think sultan hassan was my favorite.)

this morning: i'm here at the MESP villa. it's a little funny to walk in and have 30+ students know my name, shake my hand with a knowing smile and say things like, "we're so glad to finally meet you" or "we've heard so much about you." :) it's awesome to know that everyone here is excited about this and about me and j, but as with christmas it's also a little intimidating to feel like everyone here has heard so much about me- i feel like i've got a lot to live up to! :)

on food: we had koshari for lunch. i admit, i was skeptical. it was tasty though! then ful with eesh for dinner with jon's expat friends (who also have heard a lot about me- i feel like i should start baking people cookies for having to sit through so many stories! :)) then, of course, as is the national pasttime here, we had shisha. or rather, everyone else had shisha and i sat with my sahlab and watched them smoke, as my sinuses are having a bit of a tough time adjusting to the air quality here. (i'm sure we'll have other chances to smoke shisha anyway. i'm not in a hurry!) i am stoked for falafels (afelafelafels).

on being white: it's a little less painfully obvious here compared to india, but traipsing around yesterday was a bit tough for me. why God has given me a heart for places where i will never, EVER fit in i'm not sure. i'm learning to reconcile myself to that, to standing out like a big ol' huge freakin' sore thumb, but i think this will be a lifelong struggle for me: to want so badly to belong and to never really be able to do it. i'm already a little sick of being welcomed to egypt- almost as much as i am sick of being yelled at in passing in india, "HIHOWAREYOUFINE" and "WELCOMETOINDIAYOUAREFROMAMREEKAYES?"

having said that, it was fun to visit all of these places i've seen in grama's photos. yesterday j and i posed for a photo in mohammad ali similar to this one of grama kingsley. i definitely had fun walking through streets where grama has been, imagining her with her big hair and fabulous sense of 1970s style in this country, so new to me and so dear to her. :) juice naana, thanks again for tracking down her photos and sending them my way!

on the pyramids: uh, freaking sweet. we haven't actually been yet, but seeing them on the horizon? seriously. is this my life? really? is this REALLY my life?

on being in a land where j's heart is so alive: it's awesome. it's wonderfully awesome to be here, and i just don't even have words for what it does to see him wear his heart on his sleeve with confidence and love and a depth of knowledge i can only hope to aspire to. it does my heart well, too, to be with someone who is so at home in another part of the world. i'm so, so thankful for the gift of this week here with him, and this gift as a whole- this relationship that is so deeply good, and brings my heart so much unbridled joy.

in the words of dear shmem, 'praise the Jesus.' :)

all for now. tomorrow we leave for sinai- not sure when i'll be able to update again, but the length of this one will probably suffice until then- whenever that is!

coffee day walla!

yesterday we went to uddamarri school, about 45 minutes from the base. immediately i was struck by how well loved that school is. the children are wonderful, speak english flawlessly and are so confident. if i could come spend every day of my trip here at uddamarri, i would do it.

this morning i was able to meet with some more of our india staff and also see dear marcus and annamma- always a joy, although they chastised me for not coming by their offices earlier so they could arrange for me to come home for dinner with them. :) this afternoon, jennifer and i wandered through general bazaar (and picked out something for beth amma! :)) and now we're enjoying chocolate donuts and chocolate cake at a little westernized coffee shop. (i'm amazed at how westernized india is becoming- moreso every time i visit!)

i'll stay with jen tonight at paul uncle's apartment and then, tomorrow is a visit to pipe village and NCL banda, and then graduation. it's so good to be here, to see the faces behind the names, see familiar faces and spend time with the people that i love here. i can't believe the trip is almost over! tomorrow night around midnight i'll head to the airport and hop on an emirates flight to cairo. i can't wait for that, either (obviously!). i'm not quite sure what to expect, as india is my only point of reference for non-western countries, but i can't imagine anyone better to jump headfirst into egypt/ egyptian culture/ life in general with. :)

it's strange to be here for just a short time, but certainly makes me excited for what's to come this summer. pinckney family, get ready. it's going to be wonderfully awesome!

i'm feelin' it

... my pre-trip freak-out, that is.

i do this every time. i get all excited for this great adventure, then in the single-digit days i start freaking out. i'd like to think it's just that i loathe packing SO much that it distracts me from what i'm about to do... i don't know what it is, really, though. perhaps it's a mix of everything- packing, uncertainty, general travel-related exhaustion, the thought of spending close to 20 hours on an airplane, the non- brushed- teeth- scuzzy- travel- face- same- clothes- for- two- days- where's- my- passport- and- why- do- i- always- misplace- it- in- my- luggage- a- million- times feeling. that, and, who wears a long skirt in a desert??

there are, of course, a number of things i'm really looking forward to- graduation, of course, but smaller things, too- the intial step off the plane, breathe in the air and know i'm in india feeling, the humidity that sits on my shoulders like a blanket (believe it or not i'm actually really looking forward to that. it's a friggin' desert up here), catching ya habibi's eyes across an airport full of ninjas and all the adventure that a week in a new place, a new city, a new country will bring. wearing sandals! taking in the country that i fell in love with almost 4 years ago. i'm excited, and i'm trying to remember the excitement more than the freak-out. we'll see how i do.

this trip's procrastionation has, thus far, resulted in a batch of homemade yogurt and a very large chunk of reading. hopefully tonight i will make some homemade cards.

to be continued.

shmeegypt! it runs in the family...

cross-post.

see photos of grama's travels here.

t-minus 9 days! YEAH!

t-minus 16 days

i am excited.

in t-minus 16 days, i will be stepping on an airplane bound for mumbai, where i will spend two days in the slums of dharavi, probably mostly at a DFN school among the rag-picker caste/population. then, i will travel to our base in hyderabad for the high school graduation of 47 children, the first to attend a DFN school from lower kindergarten to completion of studies (10th class, the indian equivalent of 12th grade).

then, i will step onto a plane bound for cairo, where i will spend a week gallivanting across egypt, from cairo to the sinai, smoke hookah, find grama k's egyptian boyfriend or his relatives or friends, use my one arabic phrase ("fi il mish-mish," or, "in your dreams") in the souk with gusto, spit in the nile and watch the sun rise across the sinai and the sun set across the gulf of aqaba.

i am excited.

i may have an incurable case of wanderlust. maybe. but i think it's something deeper, too. my bff from college once said that traveling to far-flung corners of the earth lets one see God's creation and meet His people, and thus helps us, His kids, learn more about each other and the character of God. i like that. i'm excited to see old friends in india and meet new ones in shmeegypt, to see another part of God's earth, and meet another family of His kids.

jai ho!

flight info. WoO!

20 FEB 09
UNITED AIRLINES UA918 DENVER CO - LONDON HEATHROW

21 FEB 09
BRITISH AIRWAYS BA139 LONDON HEATHROW - MUMBAI CHHATRAPATI SHIVAJI

23 FEB 09
KINGFISHER AIRLINES IT3163 CHHATRAPATI SHIVAJI MUMBAI - HYDERABAD SHAMSHABAD/ RAJIV GANDHI

1 MAR 09
EMIRATES EK525 HYDERABAD SHAMSHABAD - DUBAI

EMIRATES EK923 DUBAI - CAIRO INTL

... and there's a return to denver flight in there, too, but no one likes to think/ talk/ write about those.